Page 65 of Hold Fast

“The keep will soon be waking, and we must talk before I return you to Joan’s room.”

She groaned and rolled off of him, flopping onto her back and flinging her arm over her eyes. “’Tis too early to talk, Ewan.”

He couldn’t help but smile. But she was wrong. They needed to talknow. He needed things settled between them.

“Una,I need to know if your answer is the same as it was before.”

Her arm fell away from her face. “I havenae the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she said, rolling over and showing him her back.

He vaulted over her and out of bed. She squeaked in surprise. Ewan knelt beside the bed, his face inches from hers. He covered one of her hands with his.

“Una, on my knees, I’m asking you again if you will marry me.”

Her face fell, and Ewan forced himself to remain calm, to not let the threatening panic rise and run away with him. Again.

“I cannae marry you, Ewan,” she said. “I told you that.”

He stood, suddenly aware of his nakedness in the cold room. Una held onto his hand, though, and tugged on it.

“At least nae yet.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked, pulling his hand away and raking it through his hair.

Una sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest.

“Handfast me.”

“Christ, Una,” he gritted out, throwing his hands up in frustration. “A handfast? Why in God’s name would you want a handfast when I’m asking tomarry you?”

Una sighed and picked at a loose thread of the blanket with long fingers. “I want you to be certain,” she replied, staring hard at the wool beneath her hands. “Iwant to be certain.”

Marshaling every bit of control he had learned in his life, he kept his voice low. “You think me the sort of man to propose marriage without being certain?”

“Of course you are nae that sort of man,” she said. “But you’ve gone from never wanting to marry at all to insisting that I marry you in a verra short amount of time. And I have gone from swearing off men entirely to spending the night in your bed in naught but my skin. Let us take the year and a day.Be with melike that for a year and a day. And at the end of it, if you still want a wife and I still want you like this, I’ll marry you that verra day.”

“Una,” he said, a near growl.

“Please, Ewan,” she begged, coming to her knees, the blanket falling to the bed. He was momentarily distracted by her lush, naked body. But she pulled his attention back to her face with a snap of her fingers. “I need this. Then I will be certain. About me. About you. Aboutthis.I’ll willnae doubt it ever again.”

“And if there’s a babe? What if there is a bairn and you still decide you dinnae want this?”

It was a fair question. She looked down. He wouldn’t like her answer. “Then you’ll take me to the Stewarts, and it will be as if we never met.”

He crossed back to the bed and took her face in his hands.

“You expect me to take you and my child to the Stewarts and leave you there? Abandon my child and their mother with another clan? To care for? God’s bones, Una.”

“You wouldnae be abandoning us. You would be holding us safely there. I ken that many lairds send their heirs to grow up with other clans, and they return when they are old enough to learn with their fathers. We could come back after a time. You could raise your son to be the next laird and I could do my work, and enough time would have passed that people would have something else to talk about.”

He didn’t have time to discuss all the holes in this plan, all the ways it would fall apart, the wayshewould fall apart. Then again, it didn’t matter. There was no way that he wouldn’t want to marry her at the end of the year. He just had to make sure thatshewanted to marry him.

God help him.

“Fine. I’ll agree to your handfast. But I want you to understand that I dinnae do it for my certainty, but foryours. Mark my words, I will still want to marry you in a year and a day.”

He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, holding her body against his. He wanted to push her back onto the bed and cover her with his body. He wanted to spend the entire day beneath the blankets learning every single freckle, every dip, every curve. But he wanted to do this properly, too. Or as properly as she would allow.

“Today, Una,” he said huskily against her mouth. “I willnae sleep another night without you in this bed.”